AFK penalty issue

Had my first AFK penalty the other day. It was in Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced. I think I got it because I didn't shoot anything the entire match. My teammates shot the Tholians while I snuck in with my tiny Bird of Prey and freed the ships.

Is this right? Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that's how you were supposed to play that queue. It seems silly that the penalty for a mission like that would be based on damage alone.

Had my first AFK penalty the other day. It was in Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced. I think I got it because I didn't shoot anything the entire match. My teammates shot the Tholians while I snuck in with my tiny Bird of Prey and freed the ships.

Is this right? Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that's how you were supposed to play that queue. It seems silly that the penalty for a mission like that would be based on damage alone.

That is the very reason I stopped playing pure support or pure team builds. The devs decided helping the team is bad and if you do that you get hit by an AFK penalty. You did the mission correctly but as with most team work in this game you get punished if you do that.

… the TRIBBLE?!? wtTRIBBLE is going on? An AFK Penalty? For not doing DAMAGE? So players can be busy as TRIBBLE, working their TRIBBLE off doing Objectives, and be penalized for strategy/teamwork/playstyle??? WTF? This, this TRIBLLE has to go!

Had my first AFK penalty the other day. It was in Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced. I think I got it because I didn't shoot anything the entire match. My teammates shot the Tholians while I snuck in with my tiny Bird of Prey and freed the ships.

Is this right? Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that's how you were supposed to play that queue. It seems silly that the penalty for a mission like that would be based on damage alone.

I believe you need to inflict at least 2% of total damage throughout the mission to avoid the AFK penalty.

From a mission objective point of view, you did the correct thing. Allow your allies to distract your enemies while you sneak in and rescue the ships. But doing so causes you to fail the AFK check. It would be nice if there was a custom AKF rule that is applicable to each specific mission, but the can unleash a whole can of worms if custom AFK rules get messed of for each TFO. It would especially be annoying if the AFK rules break for each individual difficulty level rather than just the general mission itself. That mean double or triple the headaches and time required to create a fix, have the Q&A team test it, then release a patch for 'em.

Just looking at Advanced TFO, there are 39 of them. If there is an Advanced TFO, then we know there are also Normal versions of the TFO, so the bumps up the number to 78 TFO missions. There are 29 Elite TFOs and 3 TFOs that are strictly normal (including Winter Invasion). That means in the worst possible situation where custom AFK rules exists for each individual TFO, there are a total of 110 missions that would need to be individually tested to correct potentially broken custom AFK rules. That sounds like several months of work to me at the very least and that is only if the team does not focus any time on testing new content.

I'm investigating this with the guys; my impression was that ANR wasn't supposed to have the AFK penalty. Because you're right: the simplest way to play that mission is to have your buddies draw fire while you sneak in and free the Rom ships.

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Yes, it sucks that you were hit with this.. but honestly.. it's easy to work around. The damage requirement to avoid AFK is very minimal (1% of the total.) You could have just killed one single Tholian and been fine.

Yeah, I get it.. it sucks that you contributed and still were punished. I get that, and you're not wrong.. but the system is what it is, and rather it's perfect or not, it would be far worse if the system didn't exist. Ideally, the game should detect your interaction with the tractor beams holding the ships and count that as damage done.. but apparently, it doesn't work that way.

The easiest fix for this is next time just kill one single ship. It's not perfect, but this system needs to remain in place to prevent exploits. It's what we have, we just have to work with it.

Yes, it sucks that you were hit with this.. but honestly.. it's easy to work around. The damage requirement to avoid AFK is very minimal (1% of the total.) You could have just killed one single Tholian and been fine.

Honest players shouldn't have to work around undocumented "features."

Yeah, I get it.. it sucks that you contributed and still were punished. I get that, and you're not wrong.. but the system is what it is, and rather it's perfect or not, it would be far worse if the system didn't exist. Ideally, the game should detect your interaction with the tractor beams holding the ships and count that as damage done.. but apparently, it doesn't work that way.

The easiest fix for this is next time just kill one single ship. It's not perfect, but this system needs to remain in place to prevent exploits. It's what we have, we just have to work with it.

Because a real AFKer not needing to kill that one single single ship before going for his coffee break is so much worse? Seriously, I've never heard of an AFKer who got the penalty. Only newbies like the OP who didn't know they were supposed to give blood to the blood god even when the mission objectives say something else, or people who got SNR on something short like CCA and couldn't move before it was over.

Nevermind the game didn't even have AFKers until Cryptic started putting in waiting missions that win themselves in X minutes.

Because a real AFKer not needing to kill that one single single ship before going for his coffee break is so much worse.

I was explaining to the OP how to avoid the penalty, I was not condoning or agreeing with the system in place.

My only opinion on it is that it's 'better then nothing,' and it is. Ideally, the system should be revamped to allow contributing to mission objectives (like disabling tractor beams in Azure) to count toward the AFK system.

To be clear, my preferred method is to fix the system. I only advocate the current system over nothing at all.

Seriously, I've never heard of an AFKer who got the penalty.

Of course you haven't. Because only people like the OP that are 'false positives' are going to come to the forum and complain. An actual AFK'er isn't going to say anything, they're just going to try and avoid it next time.

I'm investigating this with the guys; my impression was that ANR wasn't supposed to have the AFK penalty. Because you're right: the simplest way to play that mission is to have your buddies draw fire while you sneak in and free the Rom ships.

I thought it was weird. I remember I've done ANR normal before by hiding behind the asteroids, freeing the ships and never shooting anything and still got rewards. That was quite a long time ago though.

I almost never post on the forums but I've been playing STO since just before Legacy of Romulus released. I remember before the AFK penalty was introduced you'd sometimes get 1 or 2 players in a PUG go AFK and do nothing the entire match. I looked forward to that because it meant I'd have to change up my strategy and the mission would be that little bit more challenging and fun. I don't get that as much anymore.

Teamwork never heard of it. This games a single player grind where other players just happen to occupy the same map as you.

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The funny thing is that I've been hit with AFK penalties several times while being 100% active the entire time … but players who actually advocate AFKing queues constantly have figured out ways to AFK queue after queue and get rewards for it.

Because a real AFKer not needing to kill that one single single ship before going for his coffee break is so much worse.

I was explaining to the OP how to avoid the penalty, I was not condoning or agreeing with the system in place.

My only opinion on it is that it's 'better then nothing,' and it is. Ideally, the system should be revamped to allow contributing to mission objectives (like disabling tractor beams in Azure) to count toward the AFK system.

To be clear, my preferred method is to fix the system. I only advocate the current system over nothing at all.

And I was disagreeing with you. In my opinion it's worse than nothing.

Seriously, I've never heard of an AFKer who got the penalty.

Of course you haven't. Because only people like the OP that are 'false positives' are going to come to the forum and complain. An actual AFK'er isn't going to say anything, they're just going to try and avoid it next time.

Right. And they're going to succeed at avoiding it, because the detection method is a joke. I can't imagine a scenario in which a player with decent DPS could try and fail to avoid it.

An AFK detector that only works the first time is not worth the cost of all the false positives.

The funny thing is that I've been hit with AFK penalties several times while being 100% active the entire time … but players who actually advocate AFKing queues constantly have figured out ways to AFK queue after queue and get rewards for it.

The current AFK code is entirely too simplistic and one-dimensional.

Indeed. I've played other games where the AFK detection kicks people mid-game for doing it, even with bots/macros active.

"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.

Yep, AFK pen can be dumb at times. Even got one myself for only putting out fires in undine Infiltration (was the only one doing so, map failed). Too bad.

It's specially weird on that map because, until you even reach the second phase, you simply don't get the opportunity to actually kill anything unless you draw Temple Defense, which can't happen since you drew Fires.

Therefore, if someone fails the map before you get to the second phase, AFK penalties for all!

Also got an AFK penalty on Undine Infiltration when putting out fires. For missions like this and ANR it would be nice (if possible) if it could be turned off by default.

Back before I stopped playing for a while, I had a character that I used as a healer for this map. I would sneak around when in a premade team, and get the tractor beams. Then, when we were all going to the next ship to free, I would start healing the other ships shields and hull as much as I could. Then mover to where I could free the next ship.

I never got a penalty back then. Not sure if it has been changed since then, but it may help if you do healing on others in your team on the way to the next location. I may be wrong about this.

I had very few weapons on that boat, and usually stayed back in other STFs, and did little damage, but kept my team alive a LOT longer than they would otherwise. It was a fun way to play. But hard to do also. Didn't have much to heal myself, because they were always on cool down. lol.

It should be foremost in your mind...do enough damage to negate the AFK penalty.

In other words, completely ignore the mission objectives and just fire wildly even if this negatively impacts the mission objectives, as in the case of Azure, since if you shoot, you pull aggro, get shot, and thus can't accomplish the mission objectives,

No. I did not say ignore objectives, nor did I say fire wildly. You added that.

I said it should be in foremost in your mind...to do enough damage to negate the AFK penalty.
Even the "real" AFKers know to do this. It should be passed along to everyone else.

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